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Concept Car of the Week: Fiat Ecobasic

This week we're celebrating if not the most glamorous then certainly one of the most relevant concept of the last decade, the Fiat Ecobasic. The car was first shown at the 2004 Geneva motor show as Fiat investigated how to replace Giugiaro's ancient but brilliantly utilitarian Panda. The brief was: cheap to produce, cheap to own and friendly to the environment.

Mercedes CLA Detroit debut & CLA45 AMG at Frankfurt 2013

It looks like 2013 will be the year of the new baby CLS at Mercedes, with the regular Mercedes CLA debuting at Detroit in January and the CLA45 AMG at Frankfurt 2013. The next instalment of A-Class goodness will be the arrival of the ‘Baby CLS’ – the Mercedes CLA – which sets out to emulate the CLS with a swoopy coupe design expected to change little from the impressive Mercedes Concept Style Coupe we saw at the Beijing Motor Show in April. And if the new CLA looks just like the Style Concept then Mercedes will almost certainly have another hugely successful model in the A-Class range to bolster sales towards its aim of 2.6 million Mercedes sales a year by 2020.

2013 VW Golf TDI BlueMotion Mk 7 costs from £20,335

Starting at £20,335 for the 3-door BlueMotion and rising to £20,990 for the 5-door, the new Golf also emits just 85g/km CO2 (which would have been enough for free London Congestion charging, but not any more) which is 15 per cent better than the previous Mk 6 TDI BlueMotion managed. VW has managed to tweak the Golf BlueMotion’s economy figures still further by reducing weight, fitting super low rolling resistance tyres (that run with higher pressure), longer gear ratios, stop-start and aerodynamic tweaks. Thos aerodynamic tweaks includes modifications to the front of the Golf to reduce drag by nearly 10 per cent, adding a roof spoiler, air guide elements on the back window, a masked front grill, smoother underfloor and a reduction of ride height by 15mm.